he’d lived up to his word, but not sure she liked him?
He didn’t care, although he was equally ambivalent about her presence. He wanted to focus on this woman in the bed—his mother—with no witnesses to his emotional turbulence. And yet he felt obscurely grateful that Lucy was here, a buffer. For once in his life, he needed her brand of simple kindness.
In response to her words, but ignoring her tone, he said, “Why so surprised? You beat me here.”
“I didn’t have to stop to pack.”
He nodded. And made himself look fully at his mother’s face.
After a long moment, he said, almost conversationally, “Do you know she’s only fifty-six?”
“When I saw her driver’s license.”
“She looks…” He couldn’t finish.
Very softly, Lucy said, “I thought she might be seventy.”
His mother’s face was weathered and lined far beyond her years, although the bone structure was the same. The slightly pointed chin, too, that had given her an elfin appearance. He’d noticed it most when her mood was fey, although it was nearly sharp now, whittled by hardship. Her hair was white, and thin. Her hands, still atop the coverlet, were knobbed with arthritis.
This was what a lifetime without adequate nutrition or medical care or beauty products did. Elizabeth Rutledge had been a beautiful woman. Now she was an old one.
Still, he devoured the sight of her face, the slightness of the body beneath the covers, the tired hands, with a hunger that felt bottomless. Inside, he was still the child who needed his mom and knew she needed him. He stepped forward, gripping the round metal railing on this side of the bed. The pain in his chest seared him.
“Mom.” The word came out guttural, shocking him. He swallowed and tried again. “Mom. It’s me. Adrian.”
Of course, she didn’t stir; no flicker of response twitched even an eyelid. She breathed. In and out, unaided, the only sign of life beyond the numbers on the monitor.
“I wish I’d known where you were. I would have come to get you a long time ago.”
If he’d come two weeks ago, before the accident, would she have known him? She had changed, but at least in his memory she was an adult. How much did he resemble his ten-year-old self? Even his voice would still have been a child’s. What were his chances now of getting through to her?
After a minute, in self-defense, he raised his gaze to Lucy Peterson, who watched him. “What was that you were reading?”
She glanced at the book. “Elizabeth Barrett Browning. I think I told you—” she bit her lip “—how much your mother liked her poetry.”
So much, she’d believed she was Elizabeth Barrett Browning. And a host of other Elizabeths, real and imaginary. Just never herself, Elizabeth Hamlin Rutledge, once daughter of Burt and Lana Hamlin, then wife of Maxwell Rutledge and mother of Adrian.
Perhaps when he went away that summer and let go of his grip on her hand, she’d forgotten who she was. Had she lost herself that long ago?
“I wish I knew…” he murmured, unsure what he wished. For the true story of that summer, and the year that followed? To find out what happened after, how she’d washed up here, how she had come to grasp for identities that had only a given name in common with her true self? All of the above?
“Ah,” said a voice behind him. “You must be the son.”
Adrian let go of the railing and turned. The doctor who’d entered was an elderly man, short and cherubic, head bald but for a white tonsure. He wore a lab coat open over a plaid golf shirt. Smiling, he held out his hand and they shook.
Then he looked past Adrian and shook his head in disapproval. “Lucy, you’re back. You know, she won’t float away if you go home and watch a sitcom, take a long bath, get to bed early.”
Adrian supposed that was a good way to describe his childish fears about his mother: that she might float away if he let go. There had always been something insubstantial about her, not quite anchored to the here and now.
Lucy smiled, but said, “I didn’t want Mr. Rutledge to feel abandoned.”
Adrian knew vaguely that women like this did exist—caretakers, nurturers. Or perhaps he was jumping to a conclusion where she was concerned. Maybe it was only his mother who inspired this fierce need to protect.
“It sounds as if Ms. Peterson went to a lot of effort to locate me,” he said.
“And thank God she succeeded. Ah…I’m Ben Slater.”
“I appreciate your taking care of her, Doctor. I’m hoping you can tell me more about what’s going on with my mother so that I can make decisions about her care.”
“I haven’t been able to do much. The truth is, with brain injuries we’re most often left waiting. However much we learn, there’s more we don’t know. Someone who got a minor knock on the head dies, someone who falls ten stories to the sidewalk barely has a headache. I wish I could tell you how much damage she sustained, but I can’t. She has a broken hip and ribs as well as some internal bleeding from the impact of the car, but the real problem is that she was lifted in the air and flung a fair distance onto the pavement. She struck her head hard. We did relieve some swelling in the brain, but it’s subsided satisfactorily. She may yet simply open her eyes and ask where she is.”
And she may not. Adrian had no trouble hearing what Slater didn’t say.
On the other hand, how many head injuries had this small-town doc actually seen? What was he? Their trauma specialist? They did have an E.R., so they must have a specialist.
“Has she been seen by a neurologist?” Adrian asked, knowing the answer.
“Oh, I’m a neurosurgeon,” Dr. Slater said cheerily. “Retired, of course. My wife was from Middleton, and we always intended to retire here. But I still do some consulting.”
This fat little guy in the plaid shirt was a neurosurgeon? Was that possible?
Barely managing to suppress his you’ve-got-to-bekidding reaction, Adrian asked, “Where did you work?”
“Ended up at Harborview in Seattle. I was on the University of Washington faculty.”
Adrian’s preconceptions didn’t quite vanish—it was more like watching a piece of paper slowly burn until only grey, weightless ash hung insubstantially in the air. His mother wasn’t being cared for by some small-town practitioner who’d probably been in the bottom quarter of his class. By bizarre chance, her doctor might be one of the most highly qualified specialists in the country.
“My mother is fortunate you happened to be here.”
“She would have been if I could fix her. I can’t.”
“And you don’t think anyone can.”
He shook his head, his gaze resting on his patient’s face. “It’s up to her now. Or to God, if you believe. Lucy—” he smiled at the young woman “—may do more good by sitting here talking and reading to your mother than I can with all the technology at my disposal.”
Neurosurgeons were not known for their humility or fatalism. Adrian still had trouble believing in this one. But perhaps a lifetime of trying to salvage brain-damaged people made a man both fatalistic and humble.
Dr. Slater talked some more, about reflexes and brainwaves, but Adrian had begun to feel numb. The guy noticed, and abruptly stopped. “We should talk about this tomorrow. I understand you haven’t seen your mother in years. You must be in shock.”
“You could say that,” Adrian admitted.
“Lucy,” the doctor said briskly, “did you make arrangements for him for the night?”
Rebellion